Expletive-laden phone calls played at corruption probe

"It's tough in there," said investment banker Richard Poole as he got into the lift. Mr Poole was referring to the discomfort of being in the witness box, accused of lying, at a corruption inquiry.

"Yeah, and it's tough being a taxpayer," said an unsympathetic member of the public gallery who had been listening to Mr Poole's glib responses at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Mr Poole had to listen while a number of embarrassing, expletive-laden intercepted phone calls were played to the commission, which is inquiring into the role Mr Poole played in an allegedly corrupt coal exploration licence which was granted to his company Cascade Coal in 2009 by then NSW mining minister Ian Macdonald.

Mr Macdonald's good friend Greg Jones had a secret shareholding in Cascade Coal. On one intercepted phone call from April last year, Mr Poole is heard saying to Mr Jones: "I've made some wild assumptions but we want money (laughs) and we don't give a f--- how we get there (more laughter)."

Other calls were played between Mr Jones and Moses Obeid, the son of controversial former Labor Upper House member Eddie Obeid. The pair are heard arguing about the failure of the Cascade syndicate to pay the Obeid family the second half of the $60 million the Obeids had been promised.

The inquiry has heard the Obeid family was provided inside information from Mr Macdonald which allowed them to buy up key properties in the Bylong area where Mr Macdonald was about to announce a tender for a mining licence. The family then obtained a 25 per cent stake in the winning bidder, Cascade Coal.

Despite meeting in the Obeids' Birkenhead office and dealing directly with three of Mr Obeid's sons, Mr Poole told the commission he wasn't sure whether it was the Obeids who were going to be the recipients of the first $30 million payment.

"I didn't know whether it had gone to an uncle in Lebanon," Mr Poole told the inquiry

The covertly recorded calls were made in the wake of the collapse of the proposed $500 million purchase of Cascade Coal by White Energy in April, 2011.

A fortnight later Moses Obeid is heard having a heated conversation with Greg Jones about the failure of the deal. "Whatever he's told you is bullshit, Jonesy," said Mr Obeid, who also said: "The guy's put us in a position where we have to f---in' move."

Mr Jones then rang Mr Poole and told him he had said to Moses: "F---, you guys are paranoid idiots."

The inquiry has heard that the Obeids are still agitating for their second $30 million.